WO Goes to the Theatre
An Unconventional Way to Expose the Beast
“We need to meet with the Catalans, and if we do not reach an agreement, suicide will be waiting.” It is with this partly ironic and partly serious maxim the hero, Fernando opens the play The Method of Gronholm by Catalan screenwriter Jordi Galceran.
Imagine a sack, in which several rabid cats are placed, or a cage in which irritated and starving predators swarm. What are each of them ready to do to survive? Behind this question is something more than just hunger, because to be the first, the best, and the strongest – that’s what’s in their blood and what controls them. They are ready for anything, just like the four careerist leaders represented in the play, invited to an interview at an international firm claiming a rather prestigious position.
Enrique, Carlos, Mercedes, and Fernando meet in the same room for the last procedure to select applicants. However, the manner of implementation is so refined and elaborate that each one of the cahracters is voluntarily forced to reveal their own closeted skeletons, including intimate life, vices, and childhood traumas. The method of Gronholm changes their ideas about themselves and makes them try to be both judge and accused, boss and subordinate, aggressive hunter and victim of their own aggression. It could be stated that Ukraine, after the Revolution of Dignity, was in a similar situation, when every Ukrainian looked at himself differently in the mirror.
This detective, tragicomedy saga raises social questions about the price of a person’s dignity, of his moral principles in pursuit of the coveted, and eventually about his right to choose. Did Jordi Galceran foresee when he wrote this play in 2003, that these issues would be more important than ever for his homeland on the road to independence? Or, for that matter, for the world at large today? Find the answer for yourself in the theatrical performance at Molodiy Theatre.
The Method of Gronholm
4 January at 19.00
Tickets: 70-140 UAH
Molodiy Theatre (Prorizna 17)
molodyytheatre.com